


colliding

by orphan_account



Category: Easy Allies RPF, Gametrailers RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Grand Theft Auto Setting, Implied Sexual Content, Non-binary character, Other, Poetic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-26
Updated: 2016-08-26
Packaged: 2018-08-11 01:56:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7871131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is a city that God hates. There is a city that God cries for. There is a city that God regrets. And in this city, there are two people, dancing around each other like sparks. Unknowing. Unseeing. But existing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	colliding

It’s a situation of circumstance. A meeting of chance, two people brought together, not by the haphazard order of burning stars in the sky, but by so many choices and decisions and splits in paths and forks in the roads. At any other time, it wouldn’t have happened. If one option was chosen instead of another, they would not have ended up next to each other, instead miles away. Oceans away. Worlds away.

Dominos. Maybe that’s what they are. Set up on a lazy Saturday afternoon by someone who had nothing better to do and trailing everywhere. That last two dominos, teetering on their tipping points. Balancing precariously on the precipice that serves like a border around this world. Around their world.

They meet in a thunderstorm, sky dropping down on the city. Heavy. Thick. God is finally punishing them all, all the people that live in the city, acting out his vengeance that should have come years ago. Huber is damp, rain spots on his clothes like inverted lightning bugs dotting trees in the middle of a summer night. Alight. Burning. Maybe that’s not the best simile he could have thought of. But he got out of it, the storm, before all hell broke loose, ducked into a tiny orange-lit bookshop. It smells like dust and cloves and ancient paper and he doesn’t mind at all. It’s comfortable. Books under his touch and stark black ink and so many words that once fell from someone else’s lips. They hold a certain weight that Huber can feel as he picks up each book, too heavy with emotion and memories stored in between the pages, in between the lines.

She flies through the door with the ferocity of the wind blowing outside. The door rattles in its frame when she slams it shut. Shaking glass. 

“Stormy, huh?” She says it like it’s not obvious. She says it like he can’t see the lightning threading through the sky behind her. She says it like the lights above them aren’t flickering. She says it like she’s not drenched, dress sticking to her skin. Huber laughs. Nods. Agrees.

“Spring showers.” He shakes his head, the slightest tilt. The world rings in their ears. Thunder above them.Thunder before them. Thunder in their future. She makes her way over to him. Dripping. There is a clock counting somewhere in the store and it ticks in time with her steps. A coincidence.

“That’s where you’re wrong. Spring ended on June twenty-first, it’s the twenty-ninth now. Don’t quote me on that, though.” Her smile is audible in her words, tangible, evident in the lilt and the slant of her eyes.

“No promises.” Lightning. Split sky. Bright sky. Dark sky. The world changing too quickly in its atmospheric bubble. Contained. Full to the bursting. “Hypothetically, though, if I was going to quote that, who would I credit it too? Have to cite my sources, y’know. Etiquette.”

“Ian.” Raindrops fall outside. Pockmarked pavement. Dimples in her cheeks as she smiles. Water clinging to her hair. Captured creature, photographic perfection in a split second, the tiniest moment. Fleeting. Fighting. Finished. Lightning spreads like wings behind her. Angel. Huber dismisses the idea quickly, no one’s an angel in this city. “Your local girl-not-girl.”

“Girl-not-girl?” Huber repeats, words familiar but foreign on his tongue. Rearranged. Bursting with background on something he does not yet understand, knowledge on his tongue like overripe strawberries. Bursting.

“You got it. Non-binary, actually, but I lean towards female pronouns, so.” She shrugs. Weight of the world on her shoulders. Weight of herself on her shoulders. “Girl-not-girl works pretty well, I think.” Lights flicker overhead, the erratic pulse of the city trapped in tubing and copper wires. Panicking. She turns, no longer facing him, a dim silhouette painted against the grey world splashed in the shop windows behind her. She reaches out to the bookshelf, caressing their spines with the lightest of feather touches. Like one would do for a tired lover. Emotion conveyed through touch, throwing off sparks out into the world. They land on Huber’s shirt, burning invisible dots through his clothes and on his skin. Freckled feelings spattered carelessly in make-shift constellations. Painful. Searing. Branding.

“Huber.” She turns to look at him, fingers paused in motion. “Michael Huber. Your local… Huber.” She laughs. Thunder above. She drowns it out. 

“Well, Huber, nice to meet you. And now you know a girl-not-girl.” It suits her. This walking contradiction. A mess, hair swept back, perfectly put together. Barely breathing, the shallowest of gasps, but calm and cool and collected. Girl-not-girl. Ian.

She draws her hand back from the books, lets it fall by her side. She leans into him, barely pressing against his body, but he can feel the damp against his skin, like she was made from water. River goddess-not-goddess.

She smiles, electric. The air is charged with a thousand microscopic particles and Huber’s hair stands on end. Static. The lights pulse overheard in morse code overload. She leans back and he is infinitely colder.

“Do you want to rob a bookstore?” She holds out his gun, previously tucked away in his waist holster. It’s dark in her paper palm. Her words are heavy on her lips. She is a walking book, surrounded by so many of herself. The lights above surge, bright bright bright, before plunging them and the city into darkness.

And in the first millisecond of dark, Huber can see the paths stretching out from this very moment, all the choices and the storylines and the tangled threads. Weaving.

“Yes.” He breathes. She smiles, electric.

The city has calmed by midnight, the sky just as dark, but dotted with the smallest pinpricks of light. Ian sits with her legs crossed on the edge of her apartment building. Balancing precariously on the precipice. Huber sits next to her and behind, farther away from the edge. Balancing precautiously on the precipice. The roof around this is lit with filtered light, shining from the smallest of bulbs embedded in the concrete. Gold and red and green threading the city below. The embroidery of lives not theirs.

“I’m going to find myself in this city.” Ian declares, looking down at the stories crawling by like ants. Not their own. Her hand is next to Huber’s on the cement, fingers tapping. Restless by the city.

“I’m going to lose myself in this city. I already have.” But there’s a part of him that he will lose in her. He doesn’t know yet, but he will. 

She turns, kisses him, her hand covers his.

Wind chapped lips. Huber has to wonder how much time she spends on roofs.

They press together, down to her apartment, stumbling. Tripping. Holding each other up. Supporting more than they will ever know.

Celestial bodies, moving together. Her words are heavy on her lips, pressed, burning, into his skin. Marking. He doesn’t pull away. Universes collide, paths collide, they collide. Bruised skin. Broken minds. Beating hearts. 

She is gone in the morning and he takes his leave. Purple streaks on his skin like plum coloured blood. Burning. Marking. Claiming. He pops up his collar and doesn’t mind them.

Their paths diverge from there.

And they won’t meet again until three weeks later, until they crash into each other like two black holes in an infinite space, pulling each other in the darkness. Guiding. Burning. Claiming.

Paths like threads, woven together.

Bruised skin. Beating hearts. Broken minds. 

Beauty in their imperfections and solace in touch.

Colliding.

**Author's Note:**

> that is that  
> you can find me on tumblr @ taptaptapping.tumblr.com where i post about Ian Hinck, beautiful non-binary goddess, and Kyle Bosman, wounded birdman.


End file.
